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Sunday, October 11, 2009

My vacation was perfect. Vivid memories for a six year old kid from Cebu, visiting for the first time the hometown of my father located in the westernmost part of Zambales and host to South China Sea’s peril.

I visited the place in a time of conjugal dictatorship of Imelda and Ferdinand. It was also a time of a social volcano erupting even in the rupture.

And the six year old kid at the time was just stuck how deafening the super-sonic bombs released by F-18 fighter jets of the U.S Air Force hosted by one of US’ biggest military installation outside its homeland in Subic Naval Base in Olangapo City while passing through the dreamland.

Yes, the dreamland.

Walking for an hour from the seashore with grayish sand (a sign of abundant sea creatures) where my grandpa and grandma live, passing the thin and constricted river but nonetheless muddy, the rice paddies ready to be harvested and the passers-by shouting ‘mangan ta pon’, my uncle brought me to the only place, he said worthy of my vacation.

The place indeed brought some realistic awakening. Fine pine trees in hundreds I’ve never seen in Cebu, lake water fish, carabao’s, chicken, horses, goats, age-old trees, kasoy (which can never be found in Cebu), kamatsili (rarely found in Cebu) and several other ‘acts of God’. Surprised, matanglawin are also abundant the locals said, but most are leaving the place due to the rampaging fighter jets regularly disturbing the limited sky.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed eating the kasoy and kamatsili.

Seemingly reluctant, I traversed the scenery of a government-owned dreamland. Touching the leaves as they are about to dry while listening to the whirlwind blowing melodically and me just sitting in the carabao grass waiting for the uninterrupted conversation of my uncle and the care-taker to end.

Still, the F-18 jets destroyed my senses.

We returned to my lolo and lola’s place completely awed with what I experienced. For what is good to keep in a six year-old kid’s heart and mind is just his penchant for what is left a century hence. What the place look like, say in 1885 without the super sonic bombs and conjugal dictatorship. I wonder.

I told my tall, willowy lola with what I saw. She, being of Chinese descent from Fujian (formerly Amoy) is almost reluctant to listen to his favorite apo while playing mahjong, chewing her tobacco and inhaling it smoke from within.

My Ilocano lolo, a US war veteran adopted two Amerasians, remains isolated due to ageing.

Since last August until now, several typhoons and floods ravaged the hometown of my father, destroying what is left to keep, including vivid memories of a six year old kid from Cebu.

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About Me

“What can I tell you of my past, gentleman (he is saying) I was born in a land where the idea of freedom, the notion of right, the habit of human kindness were things coldly despised and brutally outlawed. Now and then, in the course of history, a hypocrite government would paint the walls of the nation’s prison a comelier shade of yellow and loudly proclaim the granting of rights familiar with happier states; but either these rights were solely enjoyed by the jailers or else they contained some secret flaw which made them even more bitter than the decrees of frank tyranny…Every man in the land was a slave, if he was not a bully; since the soul and everything pertaining to it were denied to man, the infliction of physical pain came to be considered as sufficient to govern and guide human nature…From time to time a thing called revolution would occur…”
I could have dreamed of writing it, but I can’t, Vladimir Nabokov did in his book, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.

Chop suey(Chinese:pinyin:zásuì; literally "assorted pieces") is aChinese dishconsisting of meats (often chicken, fish, beef, shrimp or pork) and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables such asbean sprouts,cabbage, andceleryand bound in a starch-thickened sauce. It is typically served with rice but can become the Chinese-American form ofchow meinwith the addition of stir-fried noodles.

Like “binignit” usually eaten during Holy Week and best served when hot, I hope to make your stay in my site holy and hot. Hope you also experience the “taste” of vegetable “chop suey” and may your taste stands out — like mine.